hehaden posted a photo:

Unlike a more traditional half doll, which is attached to a pin cushion, this one is part of a pin dish. She is made of porcelain and dates from the 1920s/30s. The wooden cotton reel is from the 1940s. The metal scissors are part of a boxed set of sewing tools made in the 1920s and the pins are Victorian. The 2 rolls of ribbon on the left are a cotton/linen mix and there's a little piece of antique lace at the back. I dyed the bits of fabric which make up the base with onion skins and I like the golden colour they create. Eventually, I'll use them in a sewing project, but for now they're just useful props. :)

Taken with Lensbaby Velvet 56.

Redolent of African basketry, hairstyles, headwear, and pottery, Donté K. Hayes’ abstract ceramic sculptures may be interpreted as poetic vessels, even though they lack traditional openings. While we easily associate clay pots and round woven forms with ideas related to storage, protection, and even spiritual significance, they also nod to the human head as a holder—a kind of receptacle for culture, language, personal expression, and dreams.

For the past several years, Hayes has approached porcelain with an emphasis on mostly monochrome black forms with meticulously hand-marked surfaces with textures that appear almost strand-like. Recently, he’s begun incorporating colored porcelain into the bulbous forms, inspired by African textiles like kente cloth and a kind of hat called ashetu, or prestige hats, worn by high-status Bamileke people of Cameroon. “The head is more than the center of the brain and thought; it is the place where the soul lives and must be protected,” the artist says.

In addition to Indigenous adornment traditions of Western and Central Africa, Hayes often references his interest in hip-hop culture. “Sweater,” for example, nods to the late rap star Biggie Smalls—a.k.a. The Notorious B.I.G.—and his penchant for wearing colorful knits, such as COOGI, a brand hugely popular in the 1980s and 1990s.

In addition to other vibrant new works, this piece “speaks to the African Diaspora’s freedom to be bold, unapologetic, and fully at ease in their own skin,” Hayes says. “Through experimenting with colored porcelain and by combining porcelain with mason stains to create distinct colored tones, like a DJ, I remix inherited materials into new forms, challenging ceramic hierarchies and cultural assumptions tied to color.”

Hayes’ motifs and forms draw from an array of sources, such as pottery made in Ghana and Burkina Faso, which often have ceremonial purposes. “Garner” takes these often bulbous, heavily textured vessels as a starting point, which Hayes also considers within the context of everyday use and popular culture.

“In ‘Garner,’ these traditional pottery forms visually evoked for me both bubble wrap—a material designed to safeguard fragile objects—and the Daleks from Doctor Who, a protagonist authoritarian race who destroy and exterminate other worlds and cultures through time and space,” Hayes says. “By merging these divergent ideas, I create a ‘future artifact’—a work that preserves ancestral knowledge and reclaims what was lost or erased due to the historic Atlantic slave trade and systemic racism, while also opening new possibilities for healing, care, and empowerment in the present and future.”

Hayes currently has work on view through February 18 in Ancestral Objects: Holders of Memory, Space and Time at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville’s UT Downtown Gallery. Forthcoming exhibitions this spring include his solo show, Ancestral Tomorrows, at the Sarah Moody Galley of Art at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, plus inclusion in the group exhibition Remix to Motown 45: Side A, Side B at The Carr Center in Detroit. Another solo show, Ancestral Remix at Peter Anthony Fine Art in Charleston, opens in April. Follow updates on Instagram.

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Censorship and book bans are on the rise worldwide, prompting growing concerns about access to information and free expression. Although this trajectory is increasingly worrisome, it isn’t new, as artist Xiaoze Xie reflects on his exhibition In the Name of the Book.

Comprising paintings and life-sized porcelain sculptures, the show encompasses works made in the early 1990s through the present day, all of which reflect on the vital role books play in cultural, political, and social life. Xie’s practice is largely informed by his upbringing in China—he was born in Guangdong the same year as the Cultural Revolution— and in 1989, he witnessed the deadly Tiananmen Square protests. After moving to the U.S. in 1993, he began to incorporate this history and concerns about such restrictions into his works as a form of protest.

Book banning, particularly in the U.S., can sometimes be framed as a novel issue, and part of Xie’s effectiveness is that he connects the rise in modern-day censorship to what occurred centuries before. The Forbidden Books Series interprets classic novels, plays, and more that were prohibited largely throughout the Qing Dynasty (1636-1912). Fiction like The Golden Lotus and Water Margin, for example, were charged with being sexually explicit and obscene, while the Chinese government barred the theatrical production The Peony Pavilion from leaving Shanghai for a New York performance in 1998 because of its “feudal, superstitious, and pornographic” qualities.

While these works are well-known cases of censorship, Xie points out that they’re just a sampling of a much larger problem. He writes:

Over the last 2,000 years, the books that have disappeared in China because of prohibition are countless. There is no trace of them anymore; all I have found is a small fraction. All of these old paper stacks, these silent books, consist of thoughts and discourses. These invisible and shapeless things and the stories behind them—the complicated contexts of philosophical, religious, political, historical, social, ethical, and racial issues—are gone. The history of banning books is a process of challenging repeated oppression and control, and challenging it again. It is alongside this back-and-forth repetition, I think, that history slowly marches on.

Preserving their likeness in porcelain with pages splayed out flat is an act of defiance for the artist, as he presents these otherwise concealed texts as permanently open for public consumption.

In the Name of the Book is on view through April 17 at Sapar Contemporary. Find more from the artist on Instagram.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Xiaoze Xie Preserves a Growing Collection of Banned Books in Porcelain appeared first on Colossal.